INTERVIEW: Brautigam’s Beethoven and Beyond, on Fortepiano
SACD REVIEW by Peter Burwasser
Fanfare Magazine Issue 28:5 May/June 2005

Also (below) review:

Ronald Brautigam (fp)
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN
Piano Sonatas: No. 8, op. 13, “Pathétique”; No. 9, op. 14/1; No. 10, op. 14/2; No. 11, op. 22 •
BIS SACD 1362 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 69:52)

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The Dutch musician Ronald Brautigam started his career as a concert pianist, and that label still describes his profession, in a general sense. His latest ventures in the recording studio put him in a specialized category, and yet, as he explains, the keyboards he uses are simply the proper tools for realizing the music at hand. He began playing on period instruments over 14 years ago, when he serendipitously found himself in the shop of instrument-maker Paul McNulty, who was then living in Brautigam’s hometown of Amsterdam. “I ordered a fortepiano on the spot. It was the best decision I ever made.” Since then, he has established a relationship with the Swedish label BIS (he was previously associated with Decca), for whom he has recorded an extraordinarily vivacious cycle of the Mozart piano sonatas as well as an equally exciting set of Haydn’s piano music. His newest BIS release of Beethoven piano music marks the beginning of a complete cycle of the Beethoven Sonatas.

PB: The sound of your fortepiano is different enough from modern pianos, in matters of color, tonality, weight, etc. as to alter something about the very character of the music. Do you agree? If so, does playing the music on a period instrument add to our understanding of the music? Have most people been missing out on something in this music by knowing it only as played on modern instruments?

RB: I am convinced that, in order to really understand Beethoven’s piano music, you have to know the instruments he wrote for and, more interestingly, against. In his music, Beethoven was forever trying to stretch the limits, not only of musical form but also of the instruments that were available. His music is always one step ahead of the fortepiano-makers of his days, forcing them to keep developing the piano’s construction and action, expanding the range of the keyboard and the tonal and dynamical possibilities. The problem with only playing Beethoven on modern pianos is that you miss out on this struggle of trying to squeeze music into a piano that is actually one size too small. Whereas a Steinway is always several sizes too large, thus giving a sense of not altogether deserved—and certainly unwanted—luxury and ease. In that way you certainly do miss out on the essential character of Beethoven’s music by only hearing it played on modern pianos.

PB: Do you follow the pedal markings precisely? On a modern instrument, doing so tends to lead to very blurry sound.

RB: The nature of early Viennese fortepianos, with their leather hammers, thin strings, and fragile soundboard, makes their sound very crisp, accurate, and light. This makes it possible to follow Beethoven’s rather unorthodox pedal markings. He uses the sustaining pedal quite often to create a special effect, by keeping the dampers away from the strings, and so blending all the sounds together. Because the sound of a fortepiano disappears much faster than that of a modern grand piano, it is possible to do exactly what’s written without actually drowning the music.

PB: Do you plan to use different historical instruments, perhaps a Broadwood, as you proceed with later Beethoven sonatas?

RB: My plan is to use three different [copies of] historical pianos, all built by the formidable Paul McNulty. I will use a five-octave Walther (c. 1795) for the music composed in Bonn, before 1792; a five-and-a-half-octave Walther und Sohn (c. 1805) for the early- and middle-Viennese sonatas, variations, and piano pieces (roughly up to op. 53), and a copy of an 1817 Graf for the later works. I could have used a Broadwood, or a Streicher, but wanted to do the whole project on Paul McNulty’s pianos. If it hadn’t been for his instruments, I would never have been able to reach this level of playing, and would probably have abandoned playing historical pianos a long time ago. His pianos produce just that sound I’ve always looked for in Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and have, over the last years, been a great inspiration to me.

PB: You studied with Serkin. Were you at Curtis, in Philadelphia, and did you work with Horszowski?

RB: I studied privately with Serkin in 1983, in Brattleboro, VT, near Marlboro, where he held his annual summer festival. I did meet Horszowski (who also taught at Curtis) and heard him perform at the festival, but never had any lessons with him.

PB: There is, to my ears, much of Serkin’s wonderful energy and thoughtfulness in your playing. What was his legacy to you?

RB: Serkin has certainly been a great influence on my playing. The first years after having studied with him, I tried to imitate his playing as much as possible, perhaps with mixed results. Luckily, the brain works like a filter, so in the end I have kept what suits my playing, and discarded what didn’t. The most important thing he taught me was a never-ending respect for the composer’s wishes; his motto was that by trying to please the audience, you were an entertainer; a real artist can only be interested in the composer and his score. With this philosophy it wouldn’t have surprised me at all if Serkin, had he lived longer, would by now have been seriously interested in historical pianos.

PB: I was struck by the freedom of your tempos in the Mozart recordings. You make the music almost Schubertian in feeling, both in the outer and the slow movements. Adagios come across as fantasias. How did you develop this approach?

RB: Mozart and Beethoven were great improvisers, and a lot of their variation works are basically written-out improvisations. The stricter rules of a sonata form ask, of course, for a more structural approach, but the slow movements are, again, so full of improvisational elements that it would be impossible to ignore these. And even in a sonata form, there are so many opportunities for relaxing the tempo, taking time in rounding off phrases, in short, making the music sound alive rather than being stuck between bar-lines. By simply giving each motive, each phrase the character it asks for, music will become alive and sound as fresh as if were improvised on the spot. It also helps immensely to concentrate upon the vocal qualities of his instrumental music; by thinking and breathing like a singer, the music looses the rigidity it, unfortunately, far too often suffers from.

PB: Your rhythmic sense in this music seems to relate strongly to dance. It is easy to connect these sonatas to the courtly serenades of Mozart in your playing, for example. Do you place a special emphasis on rhythm in your Mozart-playing?

RB: Rhythm is vital in Mozart’s music, and rhythm and dance are, of course, inseparable. I recently came across a remark by 18th-century German composer and theorist Johann Philipp Kirnberger, wherein he complains that musicians no longer play fugues properly, ignoring the dance character altogether and concentrating far too much on the structural elements. This shows that even a rigid form like the fugue was considered dance music. I do believe that dance and rhythm have a far greater place in the classical sonata than we sometimes allow for. Hasn’t all music originally evolved from rhythm and dance?

PB: Then there is the question of character and theater in Mozart. Do you think of Mozart’s operas in your vision of the piano sonatas?

RB: I find it impossible not to hear opera in Mozart’s piano sonatas and, even more so, concertos. His characterization of the first and second themes in a sonata exposition immediately bring to mind the dramatics of the stage. It is not hard at all to suggest some sort of plot in a first sonata movement, with it’s conflicting characters and their development. Mozart was of course an opera composer above all else, and therefore I wouldn’t hesitate to say that most of his instrumental works are mini-operas in themselves.

PB: Perhaps even more so than in the Beethoven sonatas, your choice of instrument is crucial in Mozart. How do you account for the lighter tone and timbre of the fortepiano as you play this music?

RB: There is always this discussion whether Mozart would have preferred the Steinway over the fortepiano, had he known it. He might have preferred it, but then would have composed completely different music. His piano works fit the fortepiano like a glove. He obviously loved his Walther (he clearly says so in his letters), and didn’t have Beethoven’s urge for bigger, newer sounds. He was perfectly happy with the fortepiano as he knew it, and that makes playing his works on a Walther copy so enjoyable. Everything falls into place. And let’s not forget that the Walter fortepiano in itself is a perfect instrument, the last stage in the development from harpsichord to fortepiano. It was only after him, when builders and composers began to look for bigger, grander pianos, that a new development started, finally resulting in the grand piano as we know it now. The lighter tone and timbre are a direct result of a combination of thin strings, hammers covered with leather, and a very thin and flexible soundboard. This means that you can play quite wildly without ever forcing the sound. The bass is always clear and crisp, the different registers are clearly audible, the voicing is clear and unblurred, as with a string quartet.

PB: In listening to your Mozart, especially in the careful and interesting way that you handle voicing, I wondered how your Bach might sound. Is this composer (or other Baroque music) in your repertoire? If so, what instrument do you use?

RB: I have played Bach on modern piano, not much though, since I miss the crispness of the harpsichord. I’m not very fond of playing the modern piano as if it were a harpsichord, without any dynamics, pedal, or legato. And if you do use all the possibilities of a modern instrument, the music gets blown up out of proportions. It’s a very difficult dilemma, and therefore I nowadays only listen to Bach’s music, and that of other Baroque composers, played on the proper instruments and by musicians who know what they’re doing. I do play the music of C. P. E. Bach, but then of course that was originally written for the fortepiano (at least, his later works)

PB: I see that there is some 20th-century music in your discography. What about new music?

RB: I played a lot of contemporary music in my student’s days. I like it a lot—of course, not all of it; in general, I’m more attracted to the spirit and joie de vivre of French and American composers than the heavy-goingness (if that is a word) of the Germans. But at a certain stage in your life you realize that you cannot play every kind of music equally well; there is always a part where you feel most at home, and for me that is the first Viennese school. However, I still like to play at least one contemporary piece a season; it is very useful to keep contact with living composers, if only to stay aware of the fact that Beethoven, Haydn, and Mozart were probably equally fussy when their works were premiered.

PB: Looking ahead, can you talk about both concrete projects in the planning stages and unplanned projects that you wish to do?

RB: The Beethoven CD project is one that doesn’t easily allow for other projects to run simultaneously. However, there are plans for a first CD with piano works by the living Scottish composer Ronald Stevenson. I have been a great admirer of his music for years, and feel that the time is there to do something with it. The idea is to start with a CD with his operatic fantasies and transcriptions (Berg, Britten, Weill) and take it from there. In the meantime, there are the Beethoven sonata cycles on fortepiano; I’ve begun one in Copenhagen, there will be a Beethoven marathon weekend where I play all 32 sonatas next December in Utrecht (Netherlands) and hopefully I’ll be able in the near future to do a series in the US, too. And after Beethoven? Who knows; as long as BIS still has space in its warehouse, there will always be something interesting to record.

BEETHOVEN Piano Sonatas: No. 8, op. 13, “Pathétique”; No. 9, op. 14/1; No. 10, op. 14/2; No. 11, op. 22 • Ronald Brautigam (fp) • BIS SACD 1362 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 69:52)

With this release, Ronald Brautigam embarks on what is one of the most frequently recorded musical cycles, the complete Beethoven solo piano music. Just as the knee-jerk critical reaction to, say, another set of Beethoven symphonies is a weary groan and sigh, Brautigam is bound to raise eyebrows with such an endeavor. Yet, within moments of auditioning the CD, the listener understands that this will be a standout set in several important ways. There are two technical matters of interest, the use of instrument and the recording medium, and they are closely related. This will be the first Super Audio CD cycle of Beethoven piano music, but the sound of Paul McNulty’s reproduction of an 1802 Walther und Sohn fortepiano is so distinctive that there is really nothing to compare it to. What I heard (reproduced on stereo SACD, and not in five-channel surround), was superb; at once delicate and lively, with a range of subtle tonal shading that is impossible to achieve with a modern piano. The sound was not only never fatiguing, but also ultimately superfluous, as the music itself displaced any issues of sound reproduction, which is the goal, one hopes, of the art of musical reproduction.

Brautigam opens with one of the most familiar of the sonatas, the “Pathétique.” As is the case in Pollini’s recent recording of this music on a modern piano, Brautigam takes on the music with fresh ears, with an emphasis on the structure of the music, instead of the headlong momentum that characterizes so many performances. Beethoven needs no help from a hasty and inaccurate pianist to create excitement, as Brautigam demonstrates with his deliberate manner, and the added attention to texture and harmony makes this a more satisfying version of the piece than most. It is in the three lesser-known sonatas, all in a major key, that Brautigam and his keyboard really pulls away from the pack. These wonderfully witty and effervescent pieces gain an extra dimension as rendered on this fine period keyboard, and Brautigam seems to have an intrinsic sense for relationships between the character of the music and the timbral qualities of the instrument. He also has a superb grasp of rhythmic inflection, which comes to the fore in the dance-like movements of much of this material. The spontaneous, at times conversational quality of this playing is remarkable.

If Brautigam continues this series at this high level, and there is no reason to expect otherwise, this could be a Beethoven piano-sonata cycle that challenges the very notion of playing this music on modern instruments, a stylistic paradigm shift. We have seen sweeping changes in the performance of Baroque music in a generation, after all. It might be hard to imagine right now, but it is not inconceivable that our beloved recordings of Schnabel, Serkin, Arrau, et al., may someday become historical side notes, while performances on the instruments that the music was originally conceived for is the norm.

This article originally appeared in Issue 28:5 (May/June 2005) of Fanfare Magazine.